National Public Service Award Winner: Howard H. Hendrick, Cabinet Secretary for Oklahoma Human Services

OKLAHOMA CAPITOL -- Nearly six years ago, Howard H. Hendrick left the Oklahoma Senate where he was the Republican Minority Floor Leader to take on the largest professional challenge of his life; running the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. He would walk out of the Oklahoma Senate on June 30, 1998, and wake up the next morning leading a staff of more than 8,000 state employees. His talents and skills as a practicing tax and real estate attorney for 17 years and his 12 years of experience in the Oklahoma Senate, along with his academic preparation of earning a law degree, masters of business administration and passing the Certified Public Accountancy examination would be placed in high gear as he began climbing the steep learning curve to oversee a $1.4 billion budget laced through 40 plus state and federal programs.
Prior to Coming to OKDHS:

• Principle Senate author, Literacy Improvement Act of 1997.
• Numerous State and National Task Forces for health care, early intervention, education and retirement laws.
• Joint Legislative Committee for Review of Special Services to Children and Youth.
• Interagency Coordinating Council for Early Childhood Intervention (1988-1998).

OKDHS Service:

• In five years, Hendrick led efforts to have 5,784 children placed in trial adoptive homes. That’s more than the previous 15 years combined.
• Oklahoma is the first state in the Nation to develop and implement a tiered reimbursement system to improve the quality and capacity of its childcare system, known as the Reaching for the Stars program, with Hendrick’s hand guiding the way.
• Hendrick paved the way for the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, another national first. Oklahoma committed $10 million over a five-year period to support educational and training projects and programs that support marriage and relationship building with a goal to reduce the state’s 50-plus percent divorce rate by half by 2010.
• Through a new centralized collection, Oklahoma Child Support collections have grown from $96.3 million in fiscal 1998 to more than $l53million. In four years, paternity establishments on live births increased to more than 90 percent, the child support office system expanded from 28 offices to 40 offices across the state.
• Under Hendrick’s leadership in 2002, Oklahoma hosted the first Adult Protective Services Judicial Conference in the nation that included law enforcement, district attorneys, judges, advocates and OKDHS APS administrators and field staff.
• Despite reducing developmental disabilities services authorizations by nearly $30 million, more than 7,000 Oklahomans with developmental disabilities were served through state-funded and Medicaid waiver programs.
• Medicaid set yet another record for OKDHS, covering 597,913 persons for medical care. And with this record came a timeliness rate of 90.64 percent, an improvement over fiscal year 2002.
• With food stamp cases at an all-time high in Oklahoma, OKDHS staff maintained a timeliness rate of 97%, and fed a record of nearly 555,000 Oklahomans through the use of food stamps in FY 2003.
• The Oklahoma Advantage program has served 14,298 elderly and adults with disabilities, keeping them out of nursing homes and in their own homes.

In the words of Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry, “I admire the way he leads by example and how he takes on the toughest challenges of the day and works tirelessly to succeed in solving them. His focus is on service to others above self. He is a man of vision.”

###